


who?

by dyingsureisfun



Series: mainline canon is fake (Tales From the SMP Fics) [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Tales From The SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amnesia, Angst, Crying, Depersonalization, Diary/Journal, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I suppose, In a sense, Karl Jacobs-centric, Memory Loss, Polyamory, Time Travel, Time traveller Karl Jacobs, Web Series: Tales from the SMP, i don't actually know what really happens in this story, i dunno, implied - Freeform, l'hole, no beta we die like l'manburg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28996581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyingsureisfun/pseuds/dyingsureisfun
Summary: karl forgets.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, implied
Series: mainline canon is fake (Tales From the SMP Fics) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096232
Comments: 16
Kudos: 252





	who?

**Author's Note:**

> yesterday's stream hurt me so here have a fic  
> there's more i wanna write but it'd have to wait till the weekend and by then we'll have another episode so we'll see
> 
> i should be asleep but inspiration struck me and i figured i should post this before i pass out :)  
> my only beta was grammarly

‘ _Don’t forget who you are_ ’ is scrawled across the end of every journal entry he has. It’s carved into the lid of his watch, the inside of his jacket, the backs of his gloves, and the inside of the ring on his finger. Stitched into the flap of his bag, the sleeves of his hoodie, the collar of his shirt.

It’s bitterly ironic, he thinks, after he’s done staring at each and every one of them, racking his brain for even the slightest of ideas of his past. Nothing surfaces, of course, just a blank slate where he knows there should be _something_. It leaves him frustrated and on the verge of tears, the knowledge that he should know more, _so much more_ , than he does.

It only gets worse when he manages to stumble his way out of the library he came to in and is greeted by the sight of a massive crater. A ravine. A large portion of the land simply removed. ( _I ~~t shouldn’t still be there. Didn’t he do what he was supposed too? How was that fair? How was the fact that no matter how hard he tried~~_ ~~ ** _nothing_** _changed fair in the slightest?_~~ )

The wind tousles his hair as he stands staring at the hole, a similar pit making itself a home in his stomach. Everything felt off. Wrong. Like there should be anything but what’s in front of him. (A forest, ocean, untouched hills cut through with a river, a barren flat plain of dirt, _anything_ )

“Karl!” someone calls out for their friend. ( ~~Their voice and the name sound familiar but he doesn’t know why.~~ ) He ignores them, they’re not calling for him anyways. He may not recall much, but he’d know his own name… ~~right?~~

“Karl!” they call again, and man this Karl dude is an ass, not responding to his friend like that.

There’s a sudden hand on his shoulder, spinning him around to face the owner of said hand. Who is a man, slightly shorter than him, who _seems_ is around his age. ‘ _He’s pretty_ ’ he distantly thinks before his brain fully catches up with the situation. _Is he the one yelling for ‘Karl’?_

“Karl?” the man says, still holding his shoulder, locking eyes with him. “Are you okay?” ( _Is_ **_he_ ** _Karl? Why didn’t he remember that? Has it really gotten that bad? ...what is “it”?_ )

“Oh, uh,” he says lamely (should he call himself Karl?). “I’m fine, just tired, sorry.” It rolls off his tongue like he’s said it a million times before. ~~Maybe he has, he wouldn’t know.~~

The man’s shoulders droop slightly. “You always say that, you know?” (He didn’t) “How do you really feel?”

“I’m fine, really!” Karl (he assumes that’s his name) forces a smile, something in him borderline desperate to cheer the man up. “Everything’s okay.”

The man sighs, eyes glimmering with something that Karl- but then it’s gone and the man is beaming. 

“Good!” he tugs on Karl’s arm dragging him along, away from the pit, talking all the while. “ _Sapnap_ would kill me if I, the mighty _Quackity_ , lost our _fiancée_ just because he went to do some reading.” the man says, putting odd emphasis on words. Karl appreciates it nonetheless, repeating the man’s name (Quackity, Quackity, Quackity, Quackity) over and over again in his head. He promises himself he won’t forget it (why does it feel like he’s already broken that promise?).

A quaint ( ~~familiar~~ ) house is perched on top of a nearby hill, smoke lazily drifting out of the chimney.

A man, still too far away for Karl to make out any details, is sitting on the front steps, waiting. (‘ _For_ ~~_you_ ~~ _someone_ ’, his brain whispers)

“Sap!” Quackity calls to the man, (who must be Sapnap, Karl thinks) waving his free arm in the air to catch his attention. “I found Karl outside his library!”

The man, er- _Sapnap_ , perks up, head snapping towards them as they make their way up the hill.

They meet halfway up the hill, Sapnap having raced over soon after seeing them, and he tackles Karl in a hug. 

“You’re okay!” he cries, disbelief drenched into his voice. Karl awkwardly pats the man on his back, mind scrambling for the appropriate emotion to feel over a complete stranger clinging to him like a lifeline.

“Er, yeah, I am,” Karl pats his back in hopes it will placate Sapnap enough to release him. “All ten fingers and toes too… I think,” he says in an awkward attempt to lighten the weirdly low mood. It gets Sapnap to release him, so he supposes it half worked.

“Quackity, where did you say you found him?” Sapnap asks, hand finding a resting place on Karl’s shoulder as he turns to look at the other. (Karl starts to tune out of the conversation, it feels private.)

“Outside of his library, staring at the… sunset,” Quackity says, voice empty like he’s struggling to hold himself together.

“Oh,” Sapnap’s voice breaks halfway through the very short word and then the hand is gone from Karl’s shoulder (he misses the warmth already), and Sapnap and Quackity are clinging tightly to one another, tears pouring almost silently down both of their faces. (And now it really seems too personal, so Karl slips away, letting his feet take him wherever.)

He ends up at a beach, though he couldn’t tell you how. One moment he’s making his way down a carefully laid wooden path and then he blinks and there’s a portal behind him, an unnatural warmth clinging to him, and the ruins of a house in front of him.

The sand is still warm from the now set sun when he sits down, waves lapping at his feet. Something is buzzing frantically in his pocket, but he ignores it, stripping off his long trench coat, and throwing it over the rotting remains of a table. Buzzing thing successfully removed.

He pulls out his journal next, flipping it open to look for a new page, while his other hand digs around for a pen, only to find the thing filled cover to cover. A weight settles in his gut.

The journal starts out normal enough, entries that he doesn’t wish to read numbered neatly at the top of the page, but it quickly deteriorates. Random dates litter the pages, splotches of ink make several passages illegible, notes are crammed into corners, most only half-finished thoughts. The last few pages scare him (what was his name again?). Lists of names completely swallow the page, handwriting starting off neat but quickly growing large and messy as though the author was hurried.

_Karl, Sapnap, Quackity, Dream, Tommy, Tubbo, Sam, George, Bad, Ranboo, Punz, Puffy, Eret, Techno, Phil, Wilbur, Callahan, Alyssa, Ponk, Skeppy, Ant, Niki… others. Why can’t you remember them? You’re supposed to save them! How are you going to do anything helpful if you can’t even remember their names?_

_Remember remember remember remember remember remember remember remember. What good are you to them without your memories?_

_Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t forget who you are._

_If you do then won’t he win?_

_Remember._

_\- K_

This feels like someone’s diary. Why does he even have this?

Where is he again?

**Author's Note:**

> forgot to link this last night ((at uh,,,, 11:30 i think?)) so here's the art that inspired me:  
> https://probably-a-plant-thing.tumblr.com/post/641308767304253440/so-karl-dropped-the-bomb-by-revealing-yeah-my
> 
> (i dunno how links work on here sorry)


End file.
